Seems incredible to think of, but the Eye of the Fish has reached it’s eighteenth birthday! Apparently this blog was started in 2008 and it is still going, long after people stopped reading blogs for general amusement, and long before Twitter got taken over by fascist dickheads. Welcome back to all our faithful readers, and just as big a welcome to any new ones, or people who may have landed here by accident! Whoops! Steady on there Vicar! We’re just still here, writing occasionally about things Urban, things Wellingtonian, things that are building, and other things in between.
But right now it is still the holidays as far as I am concerned (for another few days at least!!) and so in case you are sitting bored somewhere with only horrible world news feeds, I’m going to show you some pictures. Maybe one a day. You have to guess where i am, or was. So… Where in the world is this happy little chappy? And who is he?
Post script
Instantly spotted by Venetia K, so there is almost no point uploading the next picture, but I will, because I like it also. This one is surely not a bunyip, but almost certainly is from the same genre / tail / book ?
That’s a bunyip, so I’m guessing… Melbourne?
(Hello, I followed a link from @wellynews@mastodon.wellington.gen.nz to see this post, have been vaguely aware of this blog for a long time but really ought to read it more regularly.)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bunyip_State_Library_of_Victoria_2021.jpg
Good local wine but apparently it’s as hot as Hades there atm
FWIW it hit 30 in the Wairarapa today
If you get bored and want to ponder what the kids are up to these days – this is an early example of something I’ve been expecting – people starting to blend themselves in to their digital twins
All very San Fran and I only understand bits of it but you can see where she is going and how beneficial it could be but my first thought was “gurl, you’re shelling out $2k a month in subs and you didn’t even notice!?!”
https://x.com/mollycantillon/status/2008918474006122936
Happy 18th, you’re old enough to drink now
60 – amazing tale ! Who is this woman? I’ve never heard of her before, but – wow! – she really knows her stuff. Quite like me – I also work this way:
“Each operates in isolation, spawns short-lived subagents, and exchanges context through explicit handoffs. They read and write the filesystem. When an API is absent, they operate the desktop directly, injecting mouse and keystroke events to traverse apps and browsers. – keeps the system awake on runs, in airports, while I sleep. On completion, it texts me; I reply to the checkpoint and continue. All thought traces logged and artifacted for recursive self-improvement.”
Huh !! Literally, in my dreams….
She’s the founder of a AI personal assistant company called NOX, Its a pretty contested space at the moment so its not clear which if any of these start ups will survive,
At the moment AI is a “pick and shovel” play, with not too many companies making any real money from actual AI applications, and certainly nowhere near enough cash to justify the Huge almost daily billion dollar announcements…
But her life is pretty 1%-ers….
I mean,
You’re invited to a birthday from someone you met at Soho house, an exclusive private members club for the young and fabulous…. you decide to get him Taylor Swift concert tickets and a bike and talk about inviting him with the spare ticket you have to the US open final… yeah sounds like a typical thing i’d do …..
https://x.com/mollycantillon/status/1693542494053847415?s=20
Venetia K – spot on !! I’m only vaguely aware of the bunyips – memory from my increasingly receding childhood recalls a book called Bunyip Bluegum ? But I have no recollection of them looking like this. So…. do bunyips only live / grow / have adventures near Melbourne?
Anyway – lovely for you to have found us and for you to comment !! Thank you – that made my day.
The second statue is the same genre (Australiana in picture book form) but a different era – the Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek was published in the early 1970s, but the Gumnut Babies date back to 1918! https://greenhillmigration.com.au/mr-lizard-and-gumnut-baby-statue-melbourne-australia/
I assume you were visiting the State Library building. My partner & I happened upon a poetry event there featuring some Wellington poets we were familiar with, when we last visited Melbourne back in 2019. What a fantastic building it is! So beautiful. Makes you feel like they value knowledge highly.
Some links that may help;
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-bunyip-of-berkeleys-creek-melbourne-australia (on the sculpture & its link to the book)
https://thechildrensbookshop.co.nz/p/nostalgic-picture-books-the-bunyip-of-berkeley-s-creek-pb (shows the book cover)
https://wereaditlikethis.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-bunyip-of-berkeleys-creek-what-am-i.html (more in-depth coverage of the book)
My dad was from Victoria, hence assuming Melbourne – this was one of my favourite picture books from my (Auckland) childhood,so I recognised its face instantly!
From that first source that Venetia linked to above, it says:
“There are different tales and versions of similar monsters throughout the Aboriginal tribes of Australia (and Final Fantasy X), but the word “bunyip” comes from the Wemba-Wemba language of the indigenous people from the southeastern corner of the country.”
“The beast is a popular figure in Australia, but no one has settled on any one representation. The clawed thing is often portrayed a mixture of dogs, alligators, walruses, birds, and other animals.”
“This particular bunyip, cast at Meridian Foundry in Victoria, is based on the 1973 children’s book The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek, Jenny Wagner’s story of a creature who rises out of the water with no prior knowledge of itself. “What am I?” he asks. After a platypus tells him he’s a bunyip he goes on an adventure to find others like himself.”
A bunyip! That takes me back to Bunyip Bluegum (who was, in fact, a koala) and friends in Norman Lindsay’s lovely The Magic Pudding, probably my first introduction to Oz culture (about as far from Oz as you can get, so why it featured I’ve no idea).
Isn’t nostalgia wonderful – and if you want yours to be reignited, Nemo, Shroedinger’s in Petone and Book Haven in Newtown have copies – and online is the very edition that I remember https://www.thepenguinchap.com/puffin-books/p/ps98. Bliss.
Amazingly, I was just in a second hand book shop the other day, and what greeted me was a copy of Bunyip Bluegum and the Great Pudding Race. Lovely memory. But nothing looked like the Bunyip I first posted a photo of…
Eighteen?
You can go to the pub now. Hoorah!
But are there any pubs left in Wellington these days?
Southern Cross and the Thistle Inn are my pubs of choice, along with the Bachbencher of course.